and i wrote a piece called "if you can't beat 'em, tax 'em." so you decide, is president obama pro-science? or is he just another politician? now, now the really fun stuff. you guys are isolated. i always think d.c. is kind of a reasonable city in a lot of ways because it's kind of, you know, it's near virginia, it's kind of in the south, a lot of good hometown valuings. come out to the left coast sometime. [laughter] come out to the west, and you'll see a whole different set of values. so i live in seattle, i've been to portland frequently, and i love san francisco, and these are all great cities. are they bastions of good science policy? so in seattle what we called snowmageddon, december of 2008 we had a big snowstorm. heaven forbid, you don't use salt in seattle because that's bad for the environment. particularly, they said, it was bad for puget sound. it's a saltwater estuary. so adding a little bit of salt to a saltwater estuary, probably okay. the salmon will be all right. [laughter] instead, instead you take plows, and you pack down th